About CASCADIA ROOTED WELLNESS
My Story
Hi, my name is Holly Hawthorn, pronouns she/her. Thank you for your interest.
I began my professional journey with health and wellness in my early adult years, working for the Public Health Department in the Bay Area of California. I primarily worked with youth driven health issues, including projects involving nutrition and food security. I continued following my passion of community engagement with community organizing in Oakland, California. Later, I continued my work prioritizing Public Health, working abroad in West Africa for several years. I drew upon the experience of my undergraduate degree of Anthropology and applied that to International Public Health work. I spent the next 7 years traveling, living close to indigenous communities and working in many different countries and cultures, across 6 continents. I not only experienced different ways of life, but ultimately learned about myself and the culture I came from. These experiences helped me to view and understand health on a micro to macro level: the individual, the family, the community and within the international scope.
Upon returning to the US, I moved to Ashland, Oregon nearly 14 years ago because of my love of big wild spaces. My fascination with the human body and a desire to help people in my community led me to pursue massage therapy. I found medical massage therapy as a means to literally tangibly effect positive change in the lives of those I serve. Massage alleviates pain, increases mobility, thereby improving quality of life, meanwhile, relieving stress that naturally accumulates in this capitalist world we live in. It has provided me a vehicle to better understand humanity, community and health and healing and the constraints people face day to day in their efforts to feel well.
Fairly early on in my massage practice, I began to see trends of my clients taking multiple pharmaceutical drugs for preventable illnesses and more drugs to mitigate the symptoms brought on by those drugs. I knew there had to be a gentler way to be well. So, I began my journey with medicinal herbs. I began more structured studying of herbalism with the Hawthorn Institute and a variety of other herbal elders and teachers, and later studied to become a Family Herbalist for a couple of years with Rosemary Gladstar. This prepared me to launch into the clinical herbal medicine path with the Vermont Center of Integrative Herbalism. This rigorous three-year program not only emphasizes contemporary scientific approaches to herbal medicine, but that of a trauma informed practice, addressing social justice, community access and the significance of connection between people and place. That journey has unveiled what I feel is my life purpose and passion, reconnecting people with nature and empowering them to take control of their own health and wellbeing.
My Philosophy
Reverence, Connection & Engagement
I believe we are all connected in this web of life. Our health is a reflection of our environment's health and vice versa. For example, here in the Pacific Northwest, 'Cascadia', we are all too aware of the impacts of an inflamed environment, seen through the rampant forest fires of our region. This inflammation in our environment can be reflected in the inflammation often found within our bodies. Therefore, to heal ourselves we have to also heal our Earth. This land that we call the Rogue Valley is the land of the Latgawa, Shasta/ Kahosadi, the Athabascan, the Takelma and the Tutuni Peoples. It is our duties to pay respect to this land, its people and contribute to the preservation of its abundance and biodiversity.
What does this all mean? I feel that health care needs to be holistic in its scope. We can all agree that the prevailing health care model in North America just isn't working, or at least it isn't for a lot of people. In order for people to feel empowered to make positive health change in their lives and in their communities, options, access and different modalities of care are needed. I appreciate having a variety of tools in my tool belt that not only support the physical health of my clients but the mental wellbeing and emotional health and community connection and engagement.
I hope that by providing affordable quality health services, my clients can feel better in their bodies, and then have the resources to feel more connected within their families, communities and bioregion. I want to be able to provide a platform for my community to engage in meaningful ways with each other and ultimately give back to this land we live upon. The creation of Cascadia Rooted Wellness is my effort to embrace holistic health care that engages the individual to root into space, building a relationship with their medicine, their bodies and ultimately nature itself.